He's like, Are you trying to bribe me?
Are you trying to bribe me right now?"
I'm like, No, man, no. I'm not trying to bribe you.
I'm just saying, is there something that Americans do
when they get arrested in Mexico
to make it like it never existed?
[dark electronic music]
- Welcome to "This Is Not Happening."
I'm Roy Wood Jr.
When traveling, make sure--
- [gasps] - [screams]
[ominous music]
[maniacal laughter]
♪ ♪
- [growling]
♪ ♪
[Roy shouts]
[cheers and applause]
- This next comedian coming to the stage,
- You all this man from his comedy album
"The Realest in the Game,"
my good friend, Rob Christensen.
[cheers and applause]
- I'm 35 years old.
And I gotta tell you guys,
it feels great to be halfway done.
[laughter]
We're halfway there, baby.
[laughter]
I'm getting older, and I'm trying to smile more.
I am.
Because I realize that sometimes
people will look at me and they'll get nervous
that I'm gonna freestyle rap at their house party.
[laughter]
I might do it.
It's gonna be all originals with a limited vocabulary.
[laughter]
But really, sometimes people will look at me
and they'll think that I'm a dick.
Because I have a resting dick face.
[laughter]
And I have to think about why do I look like that?
And I feel--I really think it's because
for a long period in my life,
I sold drugs in Brooklyn.
And when you work in that kind of line of work,
it's good to look like a dick.
[laughter]
You just want to like--
Just turn it up.
[laughs]
It started when I was young, man.
Like, before 18, I used to go on drug adventures
with my best friend Gary and, like, we'd fly
to Portland, Oregon, and we'd buy an ounce of meth,
and then we'd fly it back on the plane
hidden in our butt cheeks.
And it was before 9/11, and before 9/11,
it was so easy to fly drugs on an airplane.
Our favorite trip that we used to take is,
we'd go down to Tijuana, Mexico,
and we'd buy ketamine.
It's the '90s, I'm sorry.
And we'd get ketamine, and we'd take it back
across the Mexican border.
And we did this a whole bunch,
and we knew a lot of bad people
and a lot of good people doing bad things.
And people were overdosing and dying,
people were going to jail,
and I felt like I was running out of chances,
so I had to get out of Brooklyn,
so I joined the Air Force.
And that straightened me out enough to go to college
and it gave me money to go to college.
So shortly after that, I found myself
going to California Polytechnic State University
in San Luis Obispo, California.
It was very different than Brooklyn.
It's like the first time where I understood
why people didn't like white people.
Like, I met people whose parents were still married.
[laughter]
People whose parents wore suits to work.
They were saving themselves till marriage.
They were going to church every Sunday.
I was terrified.
[laughter]
But I was doing well and I was cleaned up
and I was healthy, I was happy.
And my best friend back in Brooklyn, Gary,
he did the same thing.
He went to college; he was happy; he was healthy.
Got a little money, decided to visit me.
So he comes out to California.
And Gary is a Russian Jew.
And the only reason that I mention he's a Russian Jew
is because he's a walking cartoon of a Russian Jew.
He knows where you could buy a wife
and he'll haggle the price for you.
He came to San Luis Obispo and we were there just three hours
north of Mexico,
and we were feeling good, we were feeling healthy,
and we decided, hey, for old time's sake,
let's just drive to Mexico and commit a federal crime.
And we had a ritual that we do every time;
we rent a car and we go down
and we'd be the first one's there at the granero
when they opened up to buy ketamine.
First ones in line. Well, there was no line;
we're the only ones buying ketamine.
But if there was ever a line, we'd be first.
Then we would take the ketamine,
and we'd immediately shoot it up with syringes.
All right, listen.
I didn't shoot it in a vein, okay?
I'm not like a heroin addict.
I'm better than them.
I would shoot in the butt cheek or a arm muscle.
In the muscle. I'm gross.
[laughter]
And then we get high on ketamine
and we walk towards the beach.
On the way to the beach, we would hit the fruit stand.
I would buy a mango because I don't know how to cut a mango.
The nut's too big. I always slip.
I cut my hand. I'm too dainty for that.
Then when we finally got to the sand,
we would rent sad horses.
[laughter]
And by the time the horse ride was over,
we'd be sober enough to get back in the car
and go back to America.
And this was the ritual we did over and over and over.
We had it like clockwork.
Must have been, like, 30 times we bought K.
30 different mangos.
We went and we rode 30 horses.
I mean, there probably wasn't 30 different horses, you know?
It was probably, like, repeat horses,
because they only had, like, 17 horses
and horses get sick
and they're hard to take care of and stuff
and, like, you couldn't keep a stable of 30 horses.
That'd be crazy.
But still, I got on 30 saddles is what I'm saying.
And everything went according to plan.
We got back in the car,
and then we would drive deeper into the city
to a quiet place where we would find a place
to transfer the drugs and hide them
to go back to America.
What we'd do is, we'd empty tequila bottles
and then empty the liquid ketamine
into the tequila bottles and reseal them.
So then we'd get to the border,
and the border patrol would be like,
"Yo, dog, what are you bringing back?"
And I'd be like, "Yo, son, I just got this tequila."
And he'd be like, "No doubt. Enjoy America."
And then I'd play the national anthem,
and I would cross the border.
[laughter]
That might not be how border patrol agents talk.
I don't know. I--might be--
I might be misremembering that part.
So I see a place that looks quiet,
and I turn up this block,
and I end up going the wrong way up a one-way street.
And on that street is an SUV filled with four Federales.
They see me, lights and sirens; pull me over,
pull me out of the car, search the car,
find all of our ketamine.
So now we're screwed.
I'm on the curb there. I got a gun in my face.
And I'm actually nervous about this gun thing.
This is the first time I've ever been nervous
when I had a gun in my face.
In my life, it was the third time I had a gun in my face.
The first time I had a gun in my face
is when I was 16 years old
and I got caught writing graffiti in Brooklyn
and a cop put a gun in my face.
But I wasn't nervous that I'd get shot
'cause I'm a white dude in America, and we don't get shot.
[laughter]
I could literally be waving a gun around,
and they'd be like, "Sir, calm down.
Calm down, sir.
Can we get you a soda?"
[laughter]
The second time I had a gun in my face,
it was put there by archnemesis in Brooklyn,
a white Crip named Willie Boats.
[laughter]
And I wasn't nervous when Willie put a gun in my face
because Willie Boats is a bitch who ain't gonna do shit!
[laughter]
[cheers and applause]
But this time, the third time I got a gun in my face,
I'm nervous, and the reason is
'cause this time, I'm an actual bad guy.
I'm a drug trafficker.
I'm a drug tourist.
You know, to the people back in San Luis Obispo
where I came from, they don't see a difference
between a drug tourist or a sex tourist
or a hit man for the mafia.
It's all just bad people to them, and I think,
"Shit, if this cop thinks I'm a bad person,
he might feel it's within his rights to actually shoot me,
and I don't know if I blame him for it.
'Cause I'm taking advantage of his country."
But I've been in a lot of situations with cops before,
so as soon as they try to talk to me,
I knew exactly what to do.
I immediately started crying.
[laughter]
It was wet tears down rosy cheeks.
There might have been a little snot involved.
The goal was for him to be like,
"There's no way I'm gonna put this little bitch in jail."
And they separate us like cops do to interrogate us,
try to get us to mix up our stories.
And I'm such a drug addict at the time,
there was no way I was gonna rat out my drug dealer.
So I wound up screaming the story loud enough
for Gary to hear so he could repeat the story.
So I'm like, "We bought it off some weird Mexican dude
outside of the hotel that looks like a festival!"
And Gary screamed back, "I don't know, we just bought it
"off some weird dude outside of a hotel
that looks like a carnival!"
Close enough, Gary. You're a gangster.
That's my G right there. Kept the connect.
So now they realize nothing's gonna happen
with the interrogation, and we reached
the final part of this, where it's like,
what--are we gonna go somewhere?
Like, to a dirty Mexican prison or what?
What's gonna happen?
And so I stopped him and I was like, Hey, man,
is there, like--is there, like, something I could do
to make this go away?
And the cop got mad.
He's like, What are you talking about?
What are you saying to me right now?
And I was like, I don't know.
Maybe like, can I give you something,
and then this doesn't happen, you know?
Like, what-- is there something--
He's like, Are you trying to bribe me?
Are you trying to bribe me right now?"
I'm like, No, man, no.
I'm not trying to bribe you.
I'm just saying, is there something that Americans do
when they get arrested in Mexico
to make it like it never existed?
And the dude was like, Yeah, you give me money,
you give me money.
But I didn't have no cash on me,
and Gary didn't have no cash on him,
because we spent every dime we could on drugs.
So I was like, "Listen, man, I gotta go,
I can get it out of an ATM."
And for some reason,
Gary didn't have any money in the ATM.
I still don't know why, to this day,
he didn't offer up his ATM card.
They were like, All right, no doubt.
You go to the ATM and get some money for us,
and we're just gonna hold Gary.
[laughter] We're just gonna hold Gary
to make sure you come back.
So now I'm on my way to an ATM,
and I'm nervous 'cause, like, I got my boy's life
in my hands.
I mean, we turned around at this point.
We weren't hard-core drug dealers no more.
We were just, like, kids trying to have fun again.
Like, we were college kids now.
We were straightened up.
This is not supposed to be happening.
I couldn't let myself go out like that,
and I certainly couldn't let my boy go out like that.
So I hit an ATM. I put the card in.
Doesn't work--something with my card being an American card--
and I'm getting nervous.
I hit another ATM; the same thing, it won't work.
So that's it, I'm at the, like, last point
where I'm just like, God, please, God.
If you just let me get this money out the ATM
and get out of this situation,
I promise I will never, ever do drugs again.
And I hit the third ATM, and boom, I get the money out.
I pulled out, like, 250 bucks,
which is, like, 3 million pesos or something.
It just kept coming, like--
[mimics mechanical clicking]
Just fuckin'--
Just--
[laughter]
And I rush back to go save Gary.
And when I get back, the situation's changed.
Gary's now sitting in our rental car,
white as a ghost.
I don't know what they said to him
to make sure he didn't move that fuckin' car.
And then I look in the back and all the cops
are back in the SUV,
and the SUV door just opens on its own like a horror movie,
and I know that they want me to enter their little horror SUV.
So I get into the backseat and I climb in,
and now I'm in between two Federales
and there's two in the front.
The dude who's driving asked for the money;
I give it to him, he counts it.
And he was happy with the amount,
and he's like, All right, get out of here.
And I'm just like, I did it.
And I'm climbing out, and I was like, that was so easy;
I can't believe it was-- just took 250 bucks
to get out of this.
And I'm halfway out the back of the SUV
and I get a hand on my shoulder.
And a cop's spinning me around.
I'm like, "This is it.
This is the gun in my face, the knife in my gut,
they're gonna cut my head off,
put it on a tortoise in the desert."
This is the-- I knew it's too easy.
And the cop spins me around.
I look at him; we make eye contact.
And he's like, "You forgot this,"
and gives me back all my drugs.
[cheers and applause]
And I jumped out of the SUV, I'm like, Screw you, God!
I don't even believe in you!
I'm getting high, baby! See you on my deathbed!
[cheers and applause]
I jumped back into our car.
We get going, we transfer our drugs, and we're going.
We don't say anything to each other.
We've just been through this, like, traumatic experience.
And we're driving, and I feel Gary turn in to look at me,
and he's gonna say, like, the first thing he said to me
in probably 40 minutes.
And I'm like, This is it.
This is gonna be our first best friend "I love you."
I've been waiting for him to say it.
I'm gonna say it back.
And I look at him and I'm waiting for it
and he turns to me and he looks at me and he's like,
"You paid them way too much money.
You could have gave 'em, like, $50, man.
Why are you wasting-- that's more drug money!
Screw you, Gary.
You owe me money now.
But we made it back, and we were safe,
and we did our drugs.
But-- - We did our drugs.
We did our drugs.
[laughter]
And we haven't gone back to Mexico since then
to smuggle any drugs.
But I did--I learned a really important lesson from that.
And it's that you should never, ever
drive the wrong way up a one-way street.
[laughter]
[cheers and applause]
And also I'm not smuggling drugs no more from Mexico.
But if by chance anyone has some ketamine
already in America...
I'm just saying, I got a birthday every year.
Hook me up.
[laughter]
Peace.
[cheers and applause]
- Rob Christensen, y'all.
[dark electronic music]